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Joe Posnanski writes about sports for a living, particularly baseball. Here, he writes about sports and also Springsteen, Hamilton, Harry Potter, iPads, infomercials, his idolization of Duane Kuiper, his family and magic. He lives in Charlotte with his wife Margo, two daughters Elizabeth and Katie, and their dog Westley. Joe is currently working on a book about Harry Houdini in today’s world.

10 Responses to The PosCast: In Our Day …

Bond movies. They were always the best when you were 12. I always heard how great the Sean Connery films were, but I do not understand the love. They are very uneven and the movies always fall apart with the “high tech”.

Well, current culture is so abysmal that almost everything was better twenty or more years ago. It’s easier to pick a few things that as good now as they ever have been, and I’ll try:

– the NBA, with a variety of top teams rather than the boring glamour teams dominating everything.
– computer games.
– the ease of getting books, music, movies, etc for free, thank you Internet!
– umpires’ accuracy in baseball.

Joe, sad as it is to say, your commentary of baseball isn’t too far off from what Steve Lyons was saying in the Red Sox booth the other day. He actually claimed that the new sliding rule and the Buster Posey rule make the game worse because the players want the contact. The players like being put in danger, makes them stay alert and play better. It was such utter nonsense. Anyway, Steve Lyons is the worst.

MAN do I hear you on the lousy directions people give. When I lived in Manhattan and visited Brooklyn, I would estimate… oh, 119% of the time, my Brooklyn friends would tell me “just go down the street.” At least half the time, and perhaps as much as three-halves the time, they would say this at an intersection, where there was not just two but four possible directions “down” could be.

Things that really were better back in the old days:
1 – Money. Pre-1964 coins were 90% silver. Definitely better than today.
2 – My birthdays. I don’t want to get older, when I was a kid I did. My birthdays were definitely better years ago.
3 – Baseball cards. Joe got this one completely right. When I was a kid baseball cards were simple, cheap, and fun. Now there are way too many to keep track of and they are so expensive that they are not really for kids anymore.
4 – Saturday morning cartoons. My kids don’t even know what Saturday morning cartoons are. Granted they have infinitely more choices for watching cartoons than I did when I was a kid…
5 – Youth sports. Parents have ruined this by taking them way too seriously.